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Continuing my "week off" from heavy-duty blogging, here's Fillerama for Sunday, screen shots from a public domain commercial reel:

First, say jell-o to everyone's favorite singing sensations, the 5th Dimension! Well, hello, gang (including the fat one)!

What brings you to our homes tonight?

Oh, I see:

Here's a superstar confluence that hasn't happened before or since, with the possible exception of Bowie and Bing: why, it's Bugs and the Monkees!

It's a spot for Kool-Aid. Note the total indifference of Mike and Mickey. Peter's off somewhere doing something else, maybe checking out the Kool-Aid, I imagine.

And let's wrap this one up with an offensive ethnic stereotype, shall we?

Ay, yi yi yi indeed. This spot touted a free Frito Bandito eraser. They don't give away ethnic stereotype erasers anymore. In fact, they don't give away anything anymore, except for useless online "codes" you can enter to, er, I'm not sure what those codes on sodas and wrappers really do. What were we talking about again? Ah, right, I'm "taking the week off." Aha.

Oh, one more: Desi gives Lucy the gift of emphysema:

Nothing says "I Love You" like a mouthful of nicotine.

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Procrastinating from actual writing continues with today's installment of Blog Filler Theater, Selected Highlights From the 1962-63 TV Guide Fall Preview Issue. It's still interesting to look through the old Fall Previews (yeah, I know, I have no life) and see what shows hit and missed.

First up, this vaguely familiar looking chap:

This one was kind of a miss, lasting one season, but the star did OK later in a very different milieu. "Stoney Burke" not only had McGarrett, but also starred a young Bruce Dern and Warren Oates (who, as far as I can tell, was never young). It was about sullen rodeo cowboys in the modern West, and I guess it wasn't right for 1962 sensibilities.

On another page, a small picture noted the arrival of another guy to the network lineup:

The blurb about the change at the desk for "The Tonight Show" speculated whether the new host would go over well with "the ladies." Guess he did.

Some shows were obvious hits from the very start:

And some probably seemed like safe bets but weren't, like this one:

Gene Kelly, based on a hit movie, how could it go wrong? But it did. At least it gave TV audiences a taste of Darren Stephens to come.

Ridiculous and sublime in one show, the one non-hit from this season I remember watching as a kid:

The brilliant Gomez Addams! The, er, well, Marty Ingels! Actually, to my toddler sensibilities, it was hilarious. But I couldn't distinguish it too easily from "Mack and Myer For Hire," despite the latter being about 5 minutes long and not starring Gomez and Marty.

Interesting postscript to this one, a show I don't recall at all other than seeing it in listings of the time:

The star of the show was not the guy saying "don't call me Charlie!" The star was a young actor named Josh Peine, who I couldn't recall at all. Whatever happened to him? That's what Google is for- found him. And he seems to have done quite well for himself in a very different field. (And dropping out of the Hollywood scene and ending up in gorgeous New Mexico... yeah, I can understand that)

One final show, another I didn't remember, a one-season bomb:

The concept was that an American family swapped daughters with a British family in an exchange student program, with all the obvious and probably unamusing consequences thereof. The American daughter was Lynn Loring, who guested on a lot of shows in the 60's and maried Roy Thinnes (!), while the British daughter was Judy Carne, who you know from "Laugh-In." The bratty British brother was Dennis Waterman, who became much more successful as an adult in "The Sweeney" and "Minder" and a zillion other British TV appearances. I can imagine how bad this show probably was, but wouldn't it be a great idea for a reality show? I mean... um... you know, forget I ever said that. I gotta go make some phone calls.

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I could comment on the Infinity "Free FM" format thing. After all, 15 years ago, I helped create the concept of "FM Talk." Surely I have an opinion on what Infinity's doing, on the chances for David Lee Roth and Adam Carolla to succeed.

Not today. I'm "off."

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The problem with shopping at Costco is that you go for one thing and you end up buying something totally different, bacause they often don't have what you want but they do have something you hadn't realized you need.

What?

Simplified: I stopped at Costco to see if they had the new Looney Tunes DVD collection, because I'd gotten Volumes 1 and 2 there, at the cheapest price. They didn't.

But they did have something else, right at the endcap, on a haphazard display of "gift and holiday books."

"The Complete Calvin and Hobbes."

List $150. Amazon price $94.50. Barnes and Noble price $90. Costco price $80.99.

Do I need it? No. Er, maybe.

When "Calvin and Hobbes" hit the papers in 1985, I was still drawing cartoons myself for some papers in the Philadelphia area. My reaction to the new strip went like this:

a) Reminds me of those Warner Bros. cartoons where the little Ralph kid daydreamed about being a cowboy and astronaut. There are worse things to resemble than a Warner Bros. cartoon.

b) The kid has the same hair that I used in my self-portrait cartoons- an unruly zig-zag of blond hair.

c) This is really, really good. Humiliatingly so- I knew I could not be that good. I hated that someone was that much better at it than I, and I loved it for being that good.

"Calvin and Hobbes" went into the pantheon for me, along with "Peanuts." I respected and liked "Doonesbury" in its first decade or so for being uniquely political and modern, but it didn't hold up like "Peanuts" and "C&H." I never really liked "Bloom County" on that level- very derivative of "Doonesbury" at the outset, too glib, not nearly as perceptive as advertised, and I always got the feeling that Breathed wanted to do something different (and when he did, with "Outland" and "Opus" and the children's books, it wasn't that great). In today's papers, "Get Fuzzy" and "Pearls Before Swine" are the main daily reads, and I like "Pooch Cafe," "Big Top," "Frazz," a few others, but there is no "Calvin and Hobbes." (Actually, there IS for a short while, the reruns that are appearing on comics pages to promote the book, but that will go away after the holidays) The precocious six year old with the hyperactive imagination, frazzled parents, and stuffed tiger pal was a unique creation, and reading the reruns in the L.A. Times for the past few weeks reminded me of just how good it was. I thought about buying the book, winced at the price and unbelievable heft of the thing, searched prices, thought about it some more, put the thought aside.

And then we were in Costco and they didn't have the Looney Tunes DVD, and I saw the stacks of huge brown boxes with the boy and his tiger lolling under a tree in autumn, and I stopped, looked, picked one up (with some difficulty- it's damn heavy), put it back, walked around the DVDs again, browsed the rest of the book section, came back, and did the should-I-gee-I-dunno-do-I-need-this-I-shouldn't thing. Then I noticed one was unwrapped, slid the first volume out, and paged through it.

December 7, 1986- Sunday strip. "Goldilocks and the Three Tigers," Hobbes' bedtime story that involves Goldilocks being divided up into portions and dunked in porridge.

Sold.

Yeah, I had to have it. We have no kids; this is for us. And now that I hauled it home and I've been browsing the early years of the strip, the decision seems to be an easy one.

Worth every penny.

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"Pearls Before Swine" takes a good, hard shot at talk radio right here.

Made me laugh.

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I thought I was taking this week off from blogging.

Maybe I am.

OK, if you insist.

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We have an election coming up here at the Edge of Southern California, and I don't know a huge amount about local politics in my town. I should be ashamed of that- civic pride, civic duty, all of that- but I don't have the time and there's not enough difference between the candidates to make a difference. Everyone's for fiscal responsibility and open spaces and maintaining the flavor of life in the area blah blah blah. OK, whatever.

And then there's the school board election. There are four candidates- we have to pick three. It's not a matter of picking the best candidate, it's more about picking the worst and voting for the other three. That would be difficult- they all stand for fiscal responsibility, maintaining the school district's high standards, blah blah blah- except for one thing. Let's see if you can tell the key difference:

Candidate 1: Retired college instructor, 22 year local resident, member of various educational committees.
Candidate 2: Incumbent, attorney, 27 year local resident.
Candidate 3: Business woman, 30 year local resident, PTA COuncil president.
Candidate 4: Retired teacher, 20 year local resident, spending huge amounts on campaign advertising, endorsed by teacher's union.

Yep.

The union's puppet- er, candidate- is buying full-page ads in the local papers with long lists of endorsements, mostly from union folks. She bought billboards- not just the little lawn signs everyone has, but full-sized billboards on the roads out of town, which cost real money. She has people flooding the local weekly with fawning letters lauding her for being a saintly, nearly perfect human being. If you aren't paying rapt attention to the issues, you'd think she's the only candidate. And, surely, if you're in the teacher's union and you want to ensure that the good times and good money keep rolling right into your checking account, you're going to love her. If you pay taxes here, you may not.

Meanwhile, Candidate 1 was offered the union's endorsement- bad- but turned it down- good. And I don't know a lot about Candidates 1, 2, and 3. But I do pay taxes here, and while I'm not against all public school spending- I'll even be voting in favor of a property tax levy that'll raise my taxes but will pay for needed physical repairs to the local schools and qualify the district for matching funds- I don't trust anyone in the union's pocket.

OK, that's settled. Next: the California propositions.

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